NAB Underwhelmed By Wireless Auction Bids

India’s next spectrum auction has been deferred by two days, to 1 October, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a revised Notice Inviting Application (NIA) for the auction, NDTV reports.

The auction is an attempt to meet the demand for wireless spectrum caused in large part by the proliferation of data-hungry smartphones.

The auction did manage to hit more than $23 billion in total “winning” bids, but at a slowing pace of less than $1 billion in new winning bids per round was not expected to come near the more than $88 billion in total auction proceeds to pay television broadcasters the $86 billion they wanted for the spectrum assets being offered up or the fees needed to clear and repackage license holders.

Shradh is followed by the Navratras, a nine-day festival that is considered auspicious, and many telecom giants were pressing the government for this change.

The commission also set the highest possible target before the auction began for the amount of spectrum it would attempt to sell.

The DoT has put on the block a total of 2,354.55 megahertz (MHz) of mobile frequencies for auction in all bands – 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz. All the radiowaves being put for auction can be used for high speed 4G services. Of this, spectrum in premium 700 Mhz band alone has potential to attract bids of Rs 4 lakh crore.

The FCC continues to raise the price, but the bids in the top markets are no longer following in lockstep. Because the Federal Communications Commission, which is overseeing the auction, announced on June 29 how much broadcasters were seeking, shares of Nexstar Broadcasting Group nxst jumped 16% and E.W. Scripps ssp 10%.

Make sure to check us out again next week when we are scheduled to speak with Guenther Ottendorfer, COO of technology at Sprint, to discuss the carrier’s recent three-channel carrier aggregation roll out in Chicago.